- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our film trailer illustrates many professional film traits as we researched existing products well and gained a greater knowledge of film trailers in doing so. The opening of our trailer shows the Lionsgate logo which adds to the professionalism of our film, as well as slow fades (dip to black) into each scene which Mel and I noticed that films do this a lot. In our research we noticed that pace was vital in a trailer to attract attention and maintain it. To use this media product convention, we started off our trailer with slow, non-disturbing shots set in a forest. This makes veiwers want to watch it to find out why it is a horror. In our editing we noticed that some of these shots were too long and our audiences began to loose interest, so we shortened them down and, again used exisiting trailer ideas, swapped the shots quickly into our fast paced horror scenes. Here the music changed into a much more upbeat melody as we noticed trailers did this to build up suspense.
We also swapped some shots into black and white to give the trailer an added feeling of unease. We became aware of how many people used this change in trailers, for example in the Quarantine movie trailer, we see the scenes changing from normal to a handheld camera. Mel and I also added in black shots with our slogan in white writing, we decided to spilt these up, so 'curiosity' appears first followed a few seconds later by 'got the better of them'. We did this as most trailers feature some sort of text break in there clip. It is used to add suspense and to make the audience wonder what the whole film will feature.
In both our film poster and magazine cover, we used our research to make our products appear as professional as possible. Our Magazine cover features pugs, images and small stories; all the features an expert cover would. Our Poster aswell is made to look as developed as possible in the real media world. The name of actors featured and the 18 rating all appear on well known posters.
- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
To make our trailer, poster and magazine front cover combine we featured all prominant images from the main film trailer in our text pieces. When developing our trailer, we decided that our front cover for the magazine would need to be bold to stand out to buyers. To do this in the best possible way, Mel and I used a medium close up of the gas masked figure to appear centralized on our front cover with a black background and bold writing that could be edited to look professional on Photoshop. This way viewers/buyers can see there is a distinct link between the film trailer and magazine cover. For our film poster, we decided that more of an establishing shot would look better across a landscape poster, so our audience can clearly see the eerie setting and one of the characters featured in the film. Again, the gas masked figure is present, linking all 3 products. Overall I think the combination of each product works well and makes our featured items consistent, making them all relate to one another.
- What have you learned from your audience feedback?
When Mel and I originally showed our audience our trailer, the 'upbeat, horror scenes' had not been added yet, so they were only able to view the start. The majority of people agreed that it was too long and needed a definate element of horror added. We took this into account, and shortened all of our opening scenes and added in the 'dip to blacks' so each shot flowed into the next. Next, we thought about what we could do to make the next section appear as scary as possible. After many attempts at filming and encountering all the problems with lighting and sound, we finally sorted out our last part. Here the audience were able to see the characters being 'tortured' which most of them agreed, finalised the trailer. After watching our clip over and over again Mel and I decided that it was almost complete but needed the added professionalism of a real trailer and after watching our classmates trailers, we realised the Lionsgate logo was what was needed. Also on my blog you can see my audience feedback section on The Blair Witch Project, as after showing our finished trailer to our class, some people commented on our film expressing certain elements to that of The Blair Witch Project.
- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout creating our film trailer, poster and front cover I used many different technologies which enabled me and Mel to create our final products. The most important was the Premiere Pro which allowed or film to be uploaded, edited and watched so we could gain our vital audience feedback and make our trailer into its final stages. I had never used this Application before so it was all new to me, but after a few practise lessons, I was editing and adding in some of the features that it boasts.
The second application which I also used alot, was Photoshop. I am familiar with this product as i had used it in my As coursework. It enabled myself and Mel to create both our film poster and magazine front cover with it's many tools and features which allowed us to create 2 professional looking products without the hassle of using Paint and Microsoft Word which we were all used to before being introduced to Photoshop.
Another important and vital technology was the Internet. Without this, my blog would not exist. It has provided the basis for all of my research, planning and construction through websites such as Google, and Youtube allowed Mel and I to access every film trailer ever made. Here I was able to analyse the trailers I watched providing myself with ideas for our own trailer. I was able to use the internet to find Film Critques websites which allowed me to see what was important in the making of a good and therefore successful trailer and enabled me to use Blogger so I could keep up to date with my work.
Also in the general making of our products Mel and I used a video camera and digital camera which allowed us to gain our footage and pictures that we would use for our poster and front cover. Our video camera gained us most of our film footage that we could then place onto Premiere Pro to be edited. The digital camera proved to play a major part when our video camera wouldn't work, so some of our footage was also captured on it, along with our pictures we took of potential settings and the images we would need for our text products. With the use of all these technologies, myself and Mel were able to create and finish all 3 of our products to a high standard that we were happy with.
